Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sporting Trade for Nagamura

The final of the three announcements for yesterday was finally made earlier today with the announcement that Sporting KC had acquired Chivas USA midfielder, Paulo Nagamura. In return, Sporting KC sent the 1st round Supplemental draft pick that KC originally received from Chivas in the Ryan Smith trade. To make things not as confusing, let's put it this way, Sporting KC traded Smith to Chivas for Nagamura and a 3rd round Supplemental draft pick.

The 28 year old Brazilian, Nagamura was a member for both Sao Paulo and Arsenal's youth systems but never played for either side. In MLS he has spent time in the league with 3 teams, LA, Toronto, and Chivas. He spent 2 years with LA before being selected by TFC in the expansion draft. Nagamura only spent a short period of time with Toronto before being traded to Chivas. He spent 3 years with Chivas, scoring 8 goals before moving to Mexico to play with Tigres. After half a year in Mexico, playing 14 games he came back to Chivas. His time back with the Goats though has been marred with injury as he only made 26 appearances in the season and a half back with the club.

Depending on the situation this could be a good move for KC. The first thing to keep an eye on is how much Nagamura's salary ends up being. Last season, Nagamura made $225,000. Not exactly the bigger cut in salary that most people (myself included) were hoping/expecting after the team traded Davy Arnaud away. Not sure at this time if Nagamura is going to be able to break the starting lineup in the midfield for KC, at that salary I'm not sure you want that sitting on your bench though. So hopefully we could see him take a bit of a pay cut. But we'll see.